Eighty years after its publication and 150 years since the actual events it fictionalizes took place it is still possible to use Willa Cather’s Death Comes for the Archbishop as a visitor’s guide to some of New Mexico’s historic pueblos.
As Cather’s Jean Marie Latour (the fictional name for John Baptist Lamy) approaches his third stop, at the Acoma pueblo, he passes magnificent rock mesas that jut upwards nearly 700 feet. Latour notes that these look to be the remnants of possible “vast cathedrals” of an ancient monumental city.
An August 26th New York Times travel piece entitled Entering the World of Willa Cather’s Archbishop brought my visit to Acoma to mind.
Apparently the writer of this piece had the same tour I had, complete with the condemnation of the exploitation of the Acoma natives by the Spanish who used them as forced labor to erect a church atop the mesa and required them to denounce their ancient religion and observe Catholic rituals. The article does not mention the story of the priest that was thrown over the side, though, so I may actually have had the deluxe tour.
A guided tour is required and you are taken by bus to the top of the mesa, although you are allowed to walk back down along a footpath on your own – but make sure you have sturdy shoes on if you are going to try it. Trust me.
You can buy wonderful pottery directly from the local artists there, but we found none of the traditional home baked items that were described to us in mouth-watering detail on the bus ride up. A few enterprising souls were selling big M&M cookies in baggies, but there were no pinon cookies or hearth-baked breads to be found.
The Library has a nice selection of Santa Fe and New Mexico travel guides available. If literary travel is your thing – as it is mine – and you are headed that way, make sure to take a look at Walks in Literary Santa Fe.